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WTO skips India on food security

-The Times of India

NEW DELHI: The World Trade Organization's (WTO's) draft declaration for next month's ministerial meeting in Nairobi made no mention of finding a permanent solution to India's concerns on food security, but promised to "address all aspects of agriculture reform as a matter of priority".

The first draft for the meeting in mid-December, however, did take note of the failure of the WTO membership to reach an agreement on most issues that were part of the Doha work programme and raised concerns about the rush of regional trade agreements (RTAs).

"We welcome the advances made in the Doha Development Agenda. We regret that it has not been possible to reach agreement on all areas of the negotiations, including agriculture, non-agriculture market access ( NAMA), services, rules, including fisheries subsidies, and TRIPS. In particular, we note the importance of agriculture to many WTO members, including LDCs (least developed countries). We will therefore address all aspects of agriculture reform as a matter of priority," the five-page document, which was released to WTO members on Friday, said.

Further, it said that the RTAs, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and RCEP, remained complementary — and not a substitute for — the multilateral trading system.

The government has so far refused to comment on the draft declaration, which has kept the issue of new agenda items open, including some contentious areas such as the link between trade and climate, currency and the global value chain. These are areas that India is not comfortable with and believes that some of them don't belong to WTO.

WTO chief Roberto Azevedo said there was a need to reconcile views in view of the stalemate and the draft has sought to touch upon the less contentious issues.

"Of course, we also need to tackle the most contentious issues — such as the reaffirmation of the Doha Development Agenda and instructions on the way forward, and openness to talking about new issues. I will set up a different process to deal with those tough, contentious issues, and we will be starting this process after the General Council is finished next week," he said in a statement.